23 | Good Idea or Indigestion

Introduction

Rob’s story about nearly killing a child in his care dominates the intro discussion. Apparently, one of his son’s friends was hanging out at Rob’s house, which he’s dubbed the “cool house,” when he nearly slit his wrist. Rob tells the harrowing tail of driving the young man to the hospital. If you have children, please be wary about sending them to Rob’s house to visit. He leaves old machinery and sharp objects strewn about his house.

The Show

It’s Jeremy’s turn to drive, and so he decides to push the car off the cliff with Rob, James, and Kevin inside. As is usual with this podcast, the car plummets off the cliff and onto the jagged rocks of reality.

On the way down, the hosts discuss how to test if a business idea is a good one, or just indigestion. Unfortunately, they didn’t ask that same question when they decided to start this podcast.

James says that a good way to test ideas is to ask how many times it comes up in conversation and his own thought process. Creating things for your own business consumption is also a great way to make sure that ideas are worthwhile.

Jeremy says that a good idea can be adjacent to your current market. If you have a current user base, you may be able to figure out what they are asking for and deliver a good solution.

Kevin suggests that it can be a good idea to find a crowded space and try to figure out what providers in that space aren’t doing well. He states that you can get this data by finding where the customers in the space gather and listen to their complaints and suggestions.

Thankfully, this show is one of the shortest AIB episodes on record.

Our Recommendations

If you’ve always wanted to become a code jockey, Kevin has a great recommendation for you. He’s been using CodeCademy to learn a new programming language and says that he’s really enjoyed it. There are courses for learning nearly any programming language that you might be interested in. I don’t know how many listeners to AIB want to learn to develop, so that seems like a bit of narrowcasting to me.

Do you like listening to podcasts? Are you looking for some fresh new content recommendations? I mean, if you’re listening to AIB, you probably need to find some good podcasts to offset this one. Rob thinks you should listen to a podcast called iReckon by his friend Adam Lowe. iReckon is a podcast that organizes and presents data about controversial topics from a pragmatic conservative perspective.

James recommends that you clean up your desk. Seriously. That’s his recommendation. It seems a bit presumptuous on his part to assume that your desk needs a good cleaning. James says that he thinks much better when his desk is clear of clutter and junk. I’m not sure that he’s ever had a clean desk, though. So, take his advice with a grain of salt. Just don’t spill that grain of salt on James’s desk.

This episode, Jeremy passes responsibility for giving his recommendation to his youngest son. Ben recommends that you go and watch Antman & The Wasp. I don’t want to make fun of Ben, so I’ll just leave this one there.